Cat’s cradle is probably one of humanity’s oldest games, and is spread among an astonishing variety of cultures, even ones as unrelated as Europeans and the Dyaks of Indonesia; Alfred Wallace who, while traveling in Borneo, thought of amusing the Dyak youths with a novel game with string, was in turn very surprised when they proved to be familiar with it, and showed him some figures and transitions that he hadn’t previously seen. In China Cat’s Cradle is called Catch Cradle. The anthropologistLouis Leakey has also described his use of this game to obtain the cooperation of Sub-SaharanAfricantribes otherwise unfamiliar with, and suspicious of, Europeans. A character in Joanna Russ‘s 1975 novel The Female Man calls cat’s cradle “the universal symbol of peace”. Link